The Senate map in 2018 poses a massive challenge for Democrats, who have to defend 24 seats to Republicans’ 10. But already, one Democratic senator is building up a huge war chest to fight off a GOP challenge.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is reporting a fundraising haul of $2.4 million in the first quarter of 2017 — the largest amount he has ever raised outside an election year. He now has $5 million on hand in total — a testament to his wholehearted embrace of the resistance and his high profile in the fight against Donald Trump. ...

His likely Republican opponent will be Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel, a Tea Partier who is already recruiting for his campaign. Mandel also ran against Brown in 2012, during which he bombarded the airwaves with a series of ridiculous lies, including claims that Brown was urging protestors to defecate on cop cars, that Brown was one of the “main” people responsible for outsourcing, and that the Affordable Care Act “will likely go down as the biggest tax increase in history.”

Despite outspending Brown by $5 million, Mandel lost that election by six points. This time around, Mandel is off to an even rockier start, with his super PAC raising only $320,000 and questions arising about his unusual financial partnership with Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks PAC.

If Democrats have any hope of keeping Ohio competitive and rebuilding the Midwestern blue wall that fell to Donald Trump in 2016, Sherrod Brown needs to win reelection this fall.

“The worry for Brown is that the state has taken a turn toward the Republicans and won’t turn back,” Kyle Kondik, part of the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball team who quite literally wrote the book on Ohio, told me. “If Brown loses, it’s hard to see how Democrats can really contest the state in 2020 — in fact, they likely wouldn’t even try.”

Ohio swung dramatically toward Republicans in 2016: After President Obama won by 3 percentage points in 2012, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 8 points. Brown is currently the only Democrat holding statewide elected office in the Buckeye State.

The two-term senator, who was first elected to the Senate in 2006, remains popular in Ohio and might have the right kind of populist persona to play well in this newly minted Trump Country. Brown is still considered a slight favorite to win this November: The UVA Crystal Ball rates the race “Lean Democrat,” as does the Cook Political Report.

The Ohio Senate race is still taking shape after seeing a dramatic shake-up on the Republican side this month. Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, whom Brown defeated by six points in 2012 and the expected favorite to win the Republican nomination again, withdrew from the race, citing family reasons.

But Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, offered unreserved applause. Having lobbied the administration in public letters and private meetings to go after Chinese steel imports, he hailed Mr. Trump’s announcement Thursday as a breakthrough. “For far too long,” he said in a statement, “Chinese cheating has shuttered steel plants across our state and put Ohioans out of work.”

If Mr. Brown was a rare supportive voice on tariffs in Congress, his stance was more familiar at home. A veteran critic of pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mr. Brown, with his limited embrace of Mr. Trump, reflected the political culture of the industrial Midwest and the survival strategy he has pioneered for Democrats there. The president captured Ohio by a resounding margin in 2016, defeating Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points while winning narrowly in neighboring Pennsylvania and Michigan. Democrats now hold only one high office in Ohio — Mr. Brown’s.

As Mr. Brown seeks a third term in 2018, it is his brand of indignant populism setting the tone for Democrats in Ohio, where the governorship and several congressional seats are also up for grabs. Long a crucial swing state, Ohio may now be the most vital proving ground for a progressive economic message in Trump country. Democrats there have adopted a rallying cry that echoes both Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and traditional union-hall populism, assailing Wall Street banks and multinational corporations for exploiting workers and accusing Washington of colluding in their perfidy.

I get email from Sherrod Brown all the time because I've given him money. He's a good guy. I sure would like to see him win again.

I follow him on Twitter. He is a good guy and not a plastic politician like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

I wonder whether what we saw in Ohio in 2016 was a pro-Trump vote or an anti-Clinton vote. I do not know why anti-Clinton sentiment would have had a great impact in Ohio but not in Illinois, so it is possible that the people of Ohio took Trump’s bait. However, the Midwestern blue wall did fall only in some places.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

In Ohio, Democratic U.S. Senator Sen. Sherrod Brown may ride Trump country to re-election ...

In 2016 Ohio's rural areas, like Scioto County, helped deliver Ohio – and the presidency – to Trump.

But this year Republicans can't count on these same counties to deliver them Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, according to Enquirer interviews with voters and experts.

Trump country, it turns out, is also Brown country.

The senator won 17 Ohio counties in 2012 that Trump won in 2016. So far this year, Brown has a comfortable lead all across Ohio, according to an Enquirer/Suffolk University poll in June. The poll showed him ahead of his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, 47 percent to 32 percent; other polls show a similar gap. Most prognosticators now give Brown the edge in the race.

Renacci, a northern Ohio businessman, has allied himself with Trump, courting his endorsement for over a year, even flying on Air Force One into Cincinnati with the president in March.

“I think it’s all about the dignity of work,” says Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in an interview in the back seat of his Chevy Suburban. “I talk about how we value work. People who get up every day and work hard and do what we expect of them should be able to get ahead. I don’t think they hear that enough from Republicans or national Democrats.”

It is an old-fashioned theme much favored by Brown, who proudly sees himself as a labor Democrat. But it is also a direct response to the 2016 political catastrophe for Brown’s party across the Midwest — and especially in Ohio.

One bottom-line truth of American politics is that given the way the electoral college operates, Democrats need to reverse the flight of the white working class to President Trump’s GOP. Ohio is ground zero this year in testing the durability of Trump’s coalition.

In Brown’s quest for reelection, the appeal to workers is working. While Ohio swung from a three-point victory for Barack Obama in 2012 to an eight-point Trump win, Brown has enjoyed leads from 13 to 18 points over Republican Rep. James B. Renacci in three polls over the past month.

Democrats are not counting on that sort of margin for Brown, but even coming in at half that range would underscore the fragility of Trump’s hold on his own electorate.